Songs from Kylie Minogue, Annie Lennox, Westlife, the Sugababes and BBC news presenters were among the other highlights on the seven-hour programme.

The programme attracted its highest audience in four years, with 11.3 million watching at its peak.

In 2006, the night raised £18.3m - with the sum reaching £33m after donations from all fund-raising was collected - and was seen by 8.9 million people at its peak.

This year Children In Need encouraged the public to "do something different" to raise money for the charity.

Presenter Terry Wogan has waived his controversial fee for presenting the show this year.

The reunited Spice Girls, all dressed in black, performed Headlines (Friendship Never Ends), the official Children in Need single, from Los Angeles during the programme. They were followed by a rendition of Elton John's Your Song by actor John Barrowman, accompanied by Myleene Klass on piano.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat star Lee Mead was one of the first acts to perform on the show.

Irish boy band Boyzone also reformed for the show, and Doctor Who star David Tennant met his predecessor Peter Davison in a specially-written sketch.

BBC news presenters Fiona Bruce, Dermot Murnaghan, Andrew Marr, Nicholas Owen, Bill Turnbull and Ben Brown performed All That Jazz from the West End musical Chicago.

The cast of BBC One soap EastEnders covered the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band and there were special editions of TV shows Dragon's Den and music quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

In the course of the live televised event:

Viewers raised £19,089,771 in total

Almost 212,000 calls from viewers were handled by BT

More than 36,000 online donations were made

More than 15,000 donations were made via the BBC's digital TV service

BT used more than 2,500 volunteers in 50 call centres across the UK to cope with the demand

National and regional BBC radio and TV stations have also been raising money for Children in Need.

On Thursday, BBC Radio 2 listener Kenneth Donnell, from Glasgow, paid £83,000 for two tickets to Led Zeppelin's reunion gig in December in a Children in Need auction.